OFFSTAGE: Why Is Kenny Chesney Being a “Good Boy”?

(CMT Offstage keeps a 24/7 watch on everything that’s happening with country music artists behind the scenes and out of the spotlight.)

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. But at an impromptu show Sunday (March 3) in Key West, Fla., Kenny Chesney
told the crowd he hasn’t had a beer yet this year. And then he apologized to the crowd for needing to be a good boy. “And this is the worst place in the world to do that,” he admitted, referring to the legendary Hog’s Breath Saloon. Ironically, Chesney called his performance a Keg in the Keys show even though he wasn’t drinking from any keg. Still, it sounds like it didn’t stop him from having fun during the three-hour show for approximately 5,000 fans and locals. It also sounds like he spent time telling the stories of his songs, like admitting that his song “On the Coast of Somewhere Beautiful” — about a gypsy kind of girl — was a true story and that the girl now lives in Jupiter, Fla. And when he did his new “Pirate Flag” single, Chesney introduced it as a song that is “a little bit about rebelling, about rebelling against anything that’s mundane in your life.” I’ll drink to that.